CHAPEL HILL — Three weeks removed from surgery to remove a benign kidney tumor, Roy Williams talked Thursday about what has become a twofold commitment to coaching.

It was a reaffirmation of his accustomed role as the head of the North Carolina men’s basketball team.

And how that fits with his new position as a willing pupil coming off a cancer scare.

The 62-year-old Williams reiterated his well-established hope of leading the Tar Heels for six to 10 more years. Right now, at least, that plan entails more rest and a reduced workload.

“I’ll try to be a very good team member, a very good patient, a very good player and listen to what the coaches say,” he said, referring to his doctors in a sports sense.

“In my mind I really have tried to slow way, way, way down. I’m trying to work four or five hours a day, something like that. I’m staying home in the mornings, coming in the afternoons.”

As North Carolina met with the media on the eve of preseason practice, an upbeat Williams held court on his health for 14½ minutes, pronouncing himself lucky and changed in some ways by the experience, and calling the last month a whirlwind of twisting emotions and thoughts.

“I’m going to smell the roses a heck of a lot more every day, I think,” he said. “It does change you. Anybody that says it doesn’t, they’re a lot stronger or more wacko than I am.

“I really wanted to coach this team. It was really important to me. And you know what’s going to happen next year, I’m really going to want to coach that team, too.”

What began as heartburn and indigestion that didn’t feel normal sent Williams for a checkup that led to blood work, an ultrasound and a CT scan, after which spots on both his kidneys were detected.

Doctors believed they were cancerous. Surgery on Sept. 19 removed the tumor on his right kidney and testing determined the growth was benign.

Then a biopsy last week on his left kidney revealed that tumor also was benign.

“From Sept. 10th until that moment, those 24 days had been pretty emotional, had been pretty tough,” Williams said.

He opted against a second surgery and doctors instead will monitor the growth on his left kidney in six-month intervals.

“I had so much care and people contacting me and calling and emailing and writing letters, it was off the charts,” Williams said.

The college basketball coaching community, in particular, reached out with support.

In addition to multiple calls from California coach Mike Montgomery (who has overcome bladder cancer) and UNLV coach Lon Kruger, Williams said every Atlantic Coast Conference coach has contacted him with well wishes.

He teed up several zingers, mentioning, for example, Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying” song while touching on his refreshed appreciation for life.

“I’m not going to get on any dad-gum bull named Fu Man Chu or anything like that,” Williams said. “I do want to do more things. But I’m not jumping out of any airplanes, either.”

And there was the golf round prior to his surgery.

The Tar Heels coach long has said he wants to birdie the last hole of golf he ever plays. After a perfectly placed drive and was followed by a dart-like approach shot into the 18th green, Williams stood over a short look at birdie.

“All of a sudden you have all kinds of weird thoughts,” he said.

Then he stroked the putt.

“It was almost the happiest I’ve ever been missing a 3-foot putt,” he said.